Please comment on this band biography

No thanks

Right, then, sorry to bother you.

i dislike the nuremberg-rally style populist frenzy hinted at in this bit: "it was a great success with lots of newly recruited fans in the audience"

a sold-out whore is a sold-out whore

No bother
Got a light?

"nuremberg-rally style populist frenzy"

What kind of name for a club is the Starke Adolf, anyway?
Aren't there enough bad bands out there, do we really need to make up *fake* bad bands?

Are they *really* fake, though?

(I was gonna use italics but the HTML proofreader will not believe that "< / i >" is appropriate.)

Sure looks completely fake to me. And wouldn't it be easy to verify some of the details (eg, where is this manufacturing plant that presses 7" vinyl in quantities of 20? Is there really a "Starke Adolf Club" in "Gothenberg"? etc.) Everything about it seems hopelessly contrived for maximum "hipster" cred - ie, "look at how much fun it pokes at hipsters! That's so cool to make fun of people who think they're cool!"

duh - yawnsville

Looks like they're real.

Nits--er, Nabisco: I use italics all of the time here.

Wait a minute. Cancel everything in the last post.

Shakey I was gonna be swayed by your argument until you put "Gothenberg" in quotes: it's in Sweden, man.

Christine: I know, I use too many italics, but for some reason the HTML check wouldn't let me. Also that google search proves nothing -- the "Homeless Club Kids" your getting are either references to the song by My Favorite or the "legendary" Village Voice article I was searching for when I came across these guys.

Poking around the rest of the site in question -- the bits that aren't in Swedish, anyway -- it could well NOT be a joke. But I'm less interested in whether it is or not and more interested in just how you take it, what it makes you think of, what mental issues it raises, etc.

(This bitch STILL says I'm not closing my itals!)

And, like, whether it's a joke or not, do you take it as a sneery joke, the way Shakey does, or as a cute joke? I think there's something charming about it.

I thought the one in Sweden was Gotheburg (no "n")? But whatever, typographical mistakes aside it just reads as too contrived. Yr right about the Google links - nothing revealing there.

Mostly the issues it raises for me have to do with how quickly scenes deteriorate into self-parody...

Because, like, this is sort of one of the daydreams of the indie-pop kid: that there could be this engaged International Pop Underground of kids who Know Where It's At, allowing any random collections of people with a good idea to be recognized as just THE THING for a moment (it's like the _Tigermilk_ daydream!) -- the result being the arc described, which is like a legendary status that never involves commerce, just one ostensibly brilliant single that defines a moment of everyone's attention and can forever be cherished as such.

I.e. this text = daydream of "what if a single were like Tigermilk but then Belle and Sebastian stopped and were forever fondly remembered for that one thing"

A cute joke, if it is a joke. Then again, I've seen stranger band biographies.

"Because, like, this is sort of one of the daydreams of the indie-pop kid: that there could be this engaged International Pop Underground of kids who Know Where It's At,"

Oh, such kids exist. And they are painfully obnoxious. I bet some of them even write for Pitchfork :)

"allowing any random collections of people with a good idea to be recognized as just THE THING for a moment"

Unfortunately, the Kids In The Know (*there's* a bandname) have no interest in "random collections of people with a good idea". They're interested in impressing people with better hair and larger record collections than them.

"(it's like the _Tigermilk_ daydream!) -- the result being the arc described, which is like a legendary status that never involves commerce, just one ostensibly brilliant single that defines a moment of everyone's attention and can forever be cherished as such."

Sure sure, I definitely feel this "fantasy" scenario - its akin to the older, more commonly discredited "rock star" fantasy of going on the road, fucking tons of groupies, and doing a lot of drugs while making a million dollars and driving your Rolls Royce or whatever... but this fantasy is more one of righteous rejection than commercial exploitation. There must be actual historical roots for this fantasy tho - surely someone's pulled off this "burn brightly for a moment" career arc, some precedent that set an example...? Tigermilk's a good example - but they ruined it by making more records (that also got progressively worse, IMHO), as you point out.

Wait, Shakey, what are you talking about? Pitchfork isn't very big on indie-pop and twee. Indie-pop kids aren't really big on the size of your record collection, either, so long as it contains lots of 7-inches. And they really do go for random collections of kids with "interesting" ideas, although the "interesting" is subjective: it's hard to explain loving Beat Happening or Tiger Trap or Cub via conventional patterns, or surely not the patterns more prevalent with things like Pitchfork or record-collector bands.

Why the fuck would some stupid band only want to press 20 copies of something? Are they fucked in the head? Even friggin Jandek presses more copies of his records than that.

And as much as I love so much music that only appears on 7" singles, my god i'm learning to despise that format

apologies for that daft, offtopic rant

I mean, could it even be a sub-Tigermilk dream, a Beat Happening line of "I recorded this on a boombox condenser mic in my bedroom and it is perfect?" It's interesting because indie-pop kids really do fetishize bands the way this bio talks about, which is how, like, Stuart from Boyracer can be King Among Men to them and then can have international votes on Most Fanciable Indie-Pop Person (last I saw winner was Laura Watling); there's a whole other mythology set up revolving exactly around things like this, exactly around "they did one single in 1987 and we will never forget them." Comp tracks, too! Like if Tullycraft had released nothing but "Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid to Know About" they would nevertheless be considered "legendary."

No, Jim, I am very interested in your opinion on this, as you are one of not-so-many ILX folks who have a tolerance for those aspiring to the "International Pop Underground" dealiebob.

"Wait, Shakey, what are you talking about? Pitchfork isn't very big on indie-pop and twee. "

But the "band" in question sounds neither indie nor twee...? The Pitchfork jab (that's a *joke* by the way - man, this is a tough crowd today!) was directed more towards the idea of their being a gang of "Kids Who Know Where It's At".

And Jim - the 20 copies thing was a red flag for me too. Besides the fact that any band who pressed that amount is phenomenally stupid (they wouldn't even have enough copies to give to their friends, or to the booker who got them their "legendary" shows!) I've never seen a pressing plant that would handle such low quantities. Although note that the bio doesn't specify vinyl, so maybe it's a CD-R (haha!) in which case the 20 copies thing is at least conceivable (although still painfully dumb).

this band biography is my ambient reality

Well for a start, I think any band that criticises its audience are as thick as two short planks. Plus bands that take it upon themselves to create their own obscurity (rather than have it occur naturally through audience indifference and poor self-promotion) are tremendously foolish.

People who take part in this sort of nonsense appear to be missing the point of what they're trying to emulate. The IPU almost certainly didn't set out to be lo-fi and obscure, it just turned out that way because of financial limitiations, anti-label stances, DIY etc etc

Judging from the bio, I don't think a "hot new punk band with [an] awesome Amiga 1200 drum machine sound [is there even such a drum machine...?]" qualifies as twee or IPU-like. Nabisco's doing some projecting here, methinks.

This bio reads more like a parody of some bad electroclash bullshit from Williamsburg.

And as much as I love My Favorite, Homeless Club Kids is a rotten band name.

I picture them sounding like Huggy Bear with electronics

Indiepop / Twee-model =

1.) One of their songs has the word "brighter" in the title
2.) THE OTHER IS A CANNANES COVER
3.) THOSE ARE THEIR ONLY TWO SONGS
4.) They are Swedish
5.) In the picture they look like 12-year-old AV club members

I'm sure the Cannanes would be less than impressed to be associated with these people

Note also the other three bands listed on the same site: Dorotea, Milkman, and Action Biker. Dorotea are described as "jangly punk" ==> tell me these aren't indie-pop bands.

Actually now that I look at this again I don't think it's made-up or a parody: I think it's a self-deprecating joke about one of the no-longer-extant bands.

"1.) One of their songs has the word "brighter" in the title

That seems kinda dubious. So Tiamat's "Brighter Than the Sun" is twee?

"2.) THE OTHER IS A CANNANES COVER"

I don't know the Cannanes.

"3.) THOSE ARE THEIR ONLY TWO SONGS"

Uh, okay.

"4.) They are Swedish"

Seems immaterial to me. So was ABBA. I'm sure there's some Swedish death metal...

"5.) In the picture they look like 12-year-old AV club members "

This seems to be the strongest pro-twee evidence to me, but I couldn't see the picture, so how was I to know? I still stand by my assertion that the *description* of their music doesn't make it sound very twee to me.

The 20 copies thing - it says released not pressed. Maybe 20 was all Gothenburg's only indie shop would take.

Don't worry, Shakey, the "brighter" one was sort of a joke: there does seem to be really heavy use of that word in the naming of (more English) indiepop stuff. (E.g. the "legendary" Sarah Records band ... Brighter.)

The Cannanes are a long-running Australian band of the International Pop Underground variety: not as "twee" in the adjective sense but definitely of the scene. Their being Swedish = the Swedish indie-pop scene is a thing to be reckoned with! Mmmm Acid House Kings. They look quite twee, and the whole thing with their labelmates being named stuff like "Action Biker!" and "Milkman" has me convinced.

Not to mention naming themselves after a My Favorite song!

please remove inverted commas when describing brighter (correctly) as legendary. thank you.